by Edmund Burke
The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound; and of the best possible dispositions to religion, to government, to the true and undivided interest of their country. Such men are naturally disposed to peace. They who are in possession of all they wish, are languid and improvident. With this fault, (and I admit it’s existence in all its extent) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of every thing for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side of all such men. All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. There they are unguarded. They do not suspect that their destruction is attempted through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly aware of — and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquility of their country to its centre, raise a continual cry for peace with France. Peace with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world, is their true motto. From the beginning, and even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the vis inertiae to their efforts, from that day to this hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls crying one note day and night, they have called for a Regicide peace.
In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies, naturally desire, that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies. But it passes my conception, how they, who wish well to their country on it’s ancient system of laws and manners, come not to be doubly alarmed, when they find nothing but a clamor for peace, in the mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual character.
I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins: not that I suppose them better born than others; but strong passions awake the faculties. They suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The spirit of enterprise gives them the full use of all their native energies. If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that in a contest, the object he violently pursues, is the very thing by which my ruin is the most perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry for peace? Because they know, that this point gained, the rest will follow of course. On our part why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of material nature to be at this time reversed? How comes it, that now for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road; and to tend to the same place of rest?
The minority I speak of, is not susceptible of an impression from the topics of argument, to be used to the larger part of the community. I therefore do not address to them any part of what I have to say. The more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call the far better part of the people; let me say, that we have not been quite fairly dealt with when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all kinds towards their warfare. No sort of argumentative materials, suited to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound, sophistical; but they are regular in their direction. They all bear one way; and they all go to the support of the substantial merits of their cause. The others have not had the question so much as fairly stated to them.
There has not been in this century, any foreign peace or war in it’s origin, the fruit of popular desire: except the war that was made with Spain in 1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war by the people who were inflamed to this measure by the most leading politicians, by the first orators, and the greatest poets of the time. For that war, Pope sung his dying notes. For that war, Johnson in more energetic strains, employed the voice of his early genius. For that war, Glover distinguished himself in the way in which his muse was the most natural and happy. The crowd readily followed the politicians in the cry for a war, which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that were attended with something more solid than glory. A war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has not had, nor will for some little time have, many prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those, in whom that higher part is most predominant, he must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise, nor bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace ten times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any end at all, the stronger he ought to be in his addresses to our magnanimity and to our reason.
In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular clamour into a measure not to be justified, I do not mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time of observation did not exactly coincide with that event; but I read much of the controversies then carried on. Several years after the contests of parties had ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree warmed with them. The events of that aera seemed then of magnitude, which the revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates, which then shook the nation, now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry. When I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to admire some of the writings against that Minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to despise them. I observed one fault in his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause. He temporised; he managed; and adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. — This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the better of the argument, as he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it. I say this after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colours, which to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune, to converse with many of the principal actors against that Minister, and with those, who principally excited that clamour. None of them, no not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct, which they as freely condemned as they would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history, in which they were totally unconcerned. Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.
In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from doing full justice to their cause in this war, as Walpole was from doing justice to the peace which at that time he was willing to preserve. They throw the light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they should not observe, that the other side which is kept in the shade, has it’s importance too. They must know, that France is formidable, not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France. They knew from the beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country. They knew, they felt, the strong dispositions of the same faction in both countries to communicate and to co-operate. For some time past, these two points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight. France is considered as merely a foreign Power; and the seditious English only as a domestick faction. The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds. To prevent our being corrupted with the mischievous doctrines of the latter, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit on the excellency of our own government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that Government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war. For any thing, which in the late discussion has appeared, the war is in
tirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism; as truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns, as the war with Spain in 1739, about Gard da Costas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins’s ears.
Some who are advocates at once for Government, and for peace with the enemies of all Government, have even gone the length of considering the proceedings in France, if at all they affect us, as rather advantageous to the cause of tranquillity and good order in this country. But I reserve my observations on this very extraordinary topic of argument to another occasion: it is now my business to point out to you, that whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little more than this,
“that the Administration wished for such a peace, full as much as the Opposition; but that the time was not convenient for making it.”
Whatever else has been said was much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They where in the nature of dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, and previous questions. Accordingly all the arguments against a compliance with the popular desires, (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal, which is necessary to a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less are they made to infuse into our minds, that stubborn persevering spirit, which alone is capable of bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune, that will probably occur, and those burthens which must be inevitably borne in a long war. I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us, that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian war of twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punick wars, the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the treaty of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be brought before us. We shall find, that in all that period of twenty-four years, there were not above six that could be called an interval of peace; and this interval was in reality nothing more than a very active preparation for war. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy. The first, when they were accepted, at the peace of Ryswick. The second, where they were rejected at the congress at Gertrudenburgh. The last, when the war ended by the treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact. I mention the length of the war as a proof, that though the countries which now compose the kingdom, for a part of the time were not united, and through all the time continued with a raw and ill cemented union, and though they were further split into parties as vehement, and more equally divided than now they are, and that we were possessed of far less abundant resources in all kinds than we now enjoy. — I mean to mark, that under all these disadvantages the English nation was then a great people; that we had then an high mind, and a constancy unconquerable; that we were then inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were durable as well as warm; such as corresponded to the great interests we had at stake. This force of character was inspired, as all such spirit must ever be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As well may we fancy that of itself the sea will swell, and without winds the billows will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will be moved and elevated without the influence of superior authority, or superior mind.
This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been given in this war; and it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made. if ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human breast. It ought not to have been a war of apology. The minister had, in this conflict wherewithal to glory in success; to be consoled in adversity; to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were not given him to support the falling edifice, he ought to bury himself under the ruins of the civilized world. All the art of Greece, and all the pride and power of eastern Monarchs, never heaped upon their ashes so grand a monument.
There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he is called to act in. His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great; an unnatural, not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard in conversation, the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest,
“that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace.”
As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolick! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves a nation where it was found. The interval between that and peace is indeed
“a very hideous dream, in which the genius and the mortal instruments are seriously at work.”
It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation; not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken up it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as fully, and as extensively considered; for peace may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear: and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils they would fly from.
In that great war carried on against Louis the XIVth, for near eighteen years Government spared no pains to satisfy the people, that though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not their ultimate object: but that every thing dear to them, in religion, in law, in liberty, every thing which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart, was then at stake. Whether they did not exaggerate the danger I will not dispute. A danger, and no small danger, unquestionably there was; and that long and arduous war was pursued, upon at least as solid and manly grounds, as the peace was made which put an end to it. A danger to avert a danger — a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future, and a worse calamity — these are the motives that belong to an animal, who, in his constitution, is at once adventurous and provident; circumspect, and daring; whom his Creator has made, as the Poet says,
“of large discourse, looking before and after.”
But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety to gratify their avarice, that passion, like all the passions, must see it’s objects distinct and near at hand. The passions are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder; contingent spoil; future long adjourned uncertain booty; pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all; these, for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.
In the war of the Grand Alliance, most of these considerat
ions voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more predominant ingredient in this war, than in that of any other that ever was waged by this kingdom.
If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just war.
If a war to prevent Louis the XIVth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the XVIth from imposing their irreligion upon us is just; a war to prevent the operation of a system, which makes life without dignity, and death without hope, is a just war.
If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations, was a just ground of war; a war to preserve national independence, property, liberty, life, and honour, from certain universal havock, is a war just, necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all equally, has an existence in the world.
You, who have looked at this matter with as fair and impartial an eye as can be united with a feeling heart, you will not think it an hardy assertion, when I affirm, that it were far better to be conquered by any other nation, than to have this faction for a neighbour. Before I felt myself authorised to say this, I considered the state of all the countries in Europe for these last three hundred years, which have been obliged to submit to a foreign law. In most of those I found the condition of the annexed countries even better, certainly not worse, than the lot of those which were the patrimony of the conqueror. They wanted some blessings — but they were free from many very great evils. They were rich and tranquil. Such was Artois, Flanders, Lorrain, Alsatia, under the old Government of France. Such was Silesia under the King of Prussia. They who are to live in the vicinity of France, are to prepare to live in perpetual conspiracies and seditions; and to end at last, in being conquered, if not to her dominion, to her resemblance. But when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is only to put a case. This is the only power in Europe by which it is possible we should be conquered. To live under the continual dread of such immeasureable evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live without the dread of them, is to turn the danger into the disaster. The influence of such a France is equal to a war; it’s example, more wasting than an hostile irruption. The hostility with any other state is separable and accidental; this state, by the very condition of it’s existence, by it’s very essential constitution, is in a state of hostility with us, and with all civilized people.
